Three Months And I'm Still Breathing
by seeyoustandingthere
Summary: Sara is back, and she and Grissom are slowly re-building what the last three months have damaged, all the while trying to take steps into their future. Pure GSR. Rated for ch 10 only.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: This little devil just slipped into my mind and wouldn't vacate. It feels like the epilogue to everything we've seen, although I'm sure we all see it differently. It's not my usual style, but I hope you like. Please review. **

**Disclaimer: As ever, they aren't mine. They're yours, CBS, and I'll thank you for setting them on a similar course as this story, if you would be so kind. Lyrics are Kelly Clarkson's.**

_Grissom_

_Three months and I'm still breathing  
Three months and I still remember it  
Three months and I wake up_

Life is suddenly good, in a new way. We are older, or so it seems, than we were.. _before._. Before three months ago happened. And not to mention what happened before that.

_Before_, we were secretive, hiding, afraid even to look at one another in the hall, when we did sneak a glance so careful not to let it consume us. _Now_, we are private, and don't need to look, because the best is always yet to come, when the doors are closed.

The difference, I had not anticipated. I thought I would hate being exposed, and yet I find that I am simply known, and by people who, as _it_ was wiping the very life out of me, transcended the boundary into friends, so subtly and so gracefully that when I looked back I realised that was what they always ought to have been.

It is only now that I can admit that I was devastated when Sara went. I read her letter with a feeling of utter dismay but with absolute understanding. Nothing teaches you about burn out faster than working amidst death and violence and a spiralling crime rate that shows no signs of abating.

I knew this, I had felt this, and for a week or so I was hurt that she hadn't shared with me what she was feeling. Until I remembered that for Sara, the death and destruction had begun long before her career had. And then I remembered that she hadn't spent a day out of town since she moved to Vegas. And then I remembered why she moved to Vegas.

Now, I didn't much care that she had been away. What mattered was that she was back, and that her smile, along with her hairbrush and pajamas, the signs of life that I had grown sore with missing, had made it back into our house.

She has been back at work for about a month now, and normality is slowly resurrecting itself around us, although we both carry a new and more delicate awareness of one another's needs. Sara is somehow regulated, calmed. She no longer forgets to eat, at least not often. She rolls into work with minutes, not hours, to spare, and exuding from her these days is just her professional brilliance. No anxiety, no unchecked emotions. She is becoming an old hand, and I am proud.

With Sara working Swing, all the pressure is taken out of the work situation. I no longer feel tense, or watch what I say or do at work. Some people know, well, if I'm honest, most people probably know, but I don't concern myself with things like that, and I find that I don't mind. I still feel respect from those I work with and who work for me, and now I can look forward to the moments in which my path may cross with Sara's in the lab without feeling like we are doing anything we shouldn't.

Us being together has become a part of the furniture of the lab in a way we always wished it could be. We were never the flaunting kind. We would never have taken advantage of our situation. We knew it was against policy but also knew that that policy existed to protect the lab's integrity from those people who would not naturally protect it, and that just isn't us. We just do our jobs and do them, I like to think, better than ever. Sara's objectivity has returned, sharper than ever. Mine has softened a little to let in the human now and again. We have learned. Natalie has taught us so many things.

It only struck me recently that Sara's was the only case in which I have had any real personal involvement. In twenty years. I was too close to it, and no-one took it from me, and I am grateful still to my team for that. They made an allowance, took a leap of faith, and trusted me to know my own bounds. By rights, I should have been sent home. But they knew, and I knew, that I had this case sewn into my mind, and that they weren't going to solve it without me.

When Nick was taken, I lead, and they looked to me for that. I took the worst things upon myself, partly through my own sense of wracking guilt, partly through the desire to spare them further anguish. I wanted it done right, but any one of them would have been as good as I that day. I was awash with fear for Nick, and only work could get me through it. And so I lead, standing shoulder to shoulder with Catherine as she faced Nick's parents, driving the car that bore us closer to Nick's location when finally, _finally_, Sara pointed it out on the map.

I carried that image with me that night as I drove home. Sara, rushing back into the layout room, her own desperation to get to him so well hidden but so damn obvious to me, breathless with knowing something, showing the expression so well versed by all of us, the sickening, satisfying, terrifying moment of making a connection that will lead you to the end, like it or not.

Usually, after a night like that, I would ride a rollercoaster, letting the wind and the rush cleanse me of the worst of it. That particular night, I stepped off the platform onto a different kind of ride altogether, one that had barely begun before that night. And it has had its ups and downs, as cherished as they are.

We were on a down when Sara disappeared. I found it so difficult to _talk_ then, and although I had tried, repeatedly, to reach Sara and make her understand about Heather, things were not restful. She was trying, I could see, and I was trying, she knew. But the road was rough, and Sara was sore where I was sheepish, from the triangulation of that hospital room and Heather's gasping utterance of my name.

Now, I know that there was more to it. Catherine's ill timed but unwitting commentary, the lab's rumour mill that so quickly latched onto the idea that I'd spent the night there. I hadn't, really. I showed up late, after my shift, and stayed until dawn when Brass arrived. We didn't sleep, and we barely talked, Heather's depression bearing down on her as I tried to find out what was going on. I called Sara, twice, but she was working, and the voicemail I left was generic enough to allow for interception, something we were both constantly wary of. Cell phones, email accounts, all are lab property, and we knew better than most how easy it would be. I didn't see Sara outside of work for days.

When I watched the security footage of Sara being dragged across the parking lot a week later, I couldn't stop the barrage of thoughts that overtook me. If I never got to say it, again. I knew she knew I loved her, but in that moment I feared that she would doubt it more than she would believe it. If this was our parting, and she had been torn from me thinking that there was anyone, anything, in this world that I would put before her..

I tried to stop thinking about Sara, after that, and concentrate. Evidence, facts, events, time, space, truth. I focused on what I knew and what I could do, and the admission I made to the team was just that – evidence, something probative, that they needed to know. They were the investigators I would want on my case, and I couldn't let them go about it without all the information. That was why I chose those words, or those words chose me. It wasn't gushing, it wasn't tear-jerking. It wasn't _If I lose her…_ because I couldn't let that get under my skin. It was cold, hard facts. _ I took away the only person she's ever loved. She's going to do the same to me._

They just took it on board. Like the professional thinkers they are. Every one of them stopped, drew back ever so slightly, and then got right back to work. They'd marvel or struggle over it later, I knew, but until she was safe, found, alive, they made no mention of it. And there was no leader. I barked orders, Catherine made calls, but there was no-one running the show. It meant something to everyone, and we were all just as terrified as one another. We were together in one thing. None of us had the answer, all of us had to fall back on the only thing we could trust – the science.

And we waited. For one of us to get that look, that Sara look, and make the connection.

Sara is here, now. She's coming down the hall, her figure blurring into focus for me as I lower my glasses, which I will replace as she comes closer. She is striding purposefully, and it sends a little thrill down my spine as I recall so many, many times we have strode these halls together, our purposes shared.

"Hey," she says, stopping just inside the door, a little sideways smile escaping her lips. "You mind if I raid your library?" She goes to my enormous bookcase, trails one finger along the spines, furrowing her brow.

"What are you looking for?"

"That book you had on… ahh." She finds what she is looking for, pulling out the large volume on corsetry. I remember when I last looked at it. She was here then, too, looking over my shoulder at the wasp waists and colour plates on the desk.

"Corsetry?" I ask, puzzled. Surely not another one.

"I know, what are the odds, huh?" She reads my mind, smiling at me. "We've got a female DB with an unusually small waist, seems consistent. I want to check this out though." She smirks. "Actually, I want to get Ronnie to check it out. She'll love this."

I smile, remembering all the times I have thought that about a younger, greener CSI. Ronnie Lake is as green as they come, but Sara speaks kindly of her, and I have a certain fondness by association. I like the reciprocity of Sara mentoring someone as Sara has been mentored.

Not that Sara had ever needed a mentor, not professionally, anyway. She had always been within a whisker of a hundred percent where accuracy and science were concerned. Only personally did she sometimes fall short – her emotions had, from time to time, gotten in her way. I smile, thinking that it is exactly that fact that made sure we did, eventually, end up together. She cocks one eyebrow at me, still thumbing through the book.

"What?" Her voice is soft, a little quieter than it would be in the company of other colleagues or the public. We each have a marginally softer tone we reserve for one another.

"Just thinking."

"About?"

"About you, dear."

She likes this, and steps a little closer to me, just the desk between us. She tucks the book under her arm.

"How's your day going?" She asks. I shrug, not unhappily.

"So far so good. I have to go to court later." Usually, this would focus me, occupy my entire day and night beforehand, preparing, but this time it is just a preliminary hearing, and I am one of two CSIs presenting, and I know my part will be small. I have now done this hundreds of times. Maybe thousands.

"Gonna be a long one?" She asks.

"I hope not," I smile, already thinking about coming home to her later. She smiles, dips her head toward the door.

"Okay," she says, heading out, "I'll see you later… _baby_." She murmurs the last word, so low that I almost miss it. I silently thank God for the successful surgery I had all those years ago, as though I had it for moments just such as this.

She has used the b word, because she knows I like it. She has toyed with it since we got together, at first saying it just now and again, in moments of extreme emotion when it seemed to just rush out of her in expression of comfort or joy. Lately, _since_, anyway, she has been saying it more. It feels… strange and beautiful.

I was always that person who thought they would never want or need to be called names. I balked at the very thought, seeing it as unnecessary, trite. Until the first time Sara spoke like that to me, and it was neither trite nor unnecessary. She is the only woman in fifty years to call me baby.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: As ever, they aren't mine. They're yours, CBS, and I'll thank you for setting them on a similar course as this story, if you would be so kind. Lyrics are Kelly Clarkson's.**

_Sara_

_Three months and I'm still breathing_

_Been a long road since those hands I left my tears in_

I wander back up the hall, carrying the book that I want to show to Ronnie. I like the relationship between myself and this book – where it comes from, when I first saw it, whose hands other than mine have turned its pages. Although really I feel this way about a lot of things that are Grissom's.

I think casually about what time I can reasonably get out of here today. I love the new relaxed feeling I get walking these halls. The thrill and the pain now come almost exclusively from cases, not from the sorry, sensory dance we used to lead one another on.

For years I hated going home, and used to stretch out my work as long as I realistically could, sometimes beyond. Then, when things changed between us, and I suddenly had something to go home for, I began to wish away the hours until we could be together. I went from loving the lab for bringing us together to hating it for keeping us apart.

Now I stay when I want or need to, and go when I don't. Suddenly this is not difficult, when previously it was a balance I just couldn't strike. Only in these last three months have I realised that even in our two years together I was at the mercy of many things. I was happy, definitely, but only now could I say I am _settled_.

My time in San Francisco both hurt and healed. It hurt me to go, although I stand by the decision I made. It didn't take many days for me to realise I would soon return. I told Grissom I would, although I know he didn't believe it until I stepped back through our front door. I stayed with my Mom for what felt like years but was not quite two months. It had to be done. There was no room for this incredible, beautiful new life we wanted without me achieving some closure on the old. And I want this new life so badly.

It was a life I always knew I wanted, but it took Natalie to really educate me. Before, with Grissom, we swept along, as though we were the epilogue to a good rom com. Like all movies that are only momentarily satisfying, no –one thinks about what might become of that essentially perfectly matched but perfectly dysfunctional couple two years down the line.

We were happy, definitely. Suited, certainly, and our chemistry was second to nothing I have ever experienced. It was the long, drawn out payoff for what seemed a lifetime left wanting. But neither of us could think of what was ahead of us, and for a long time I had the underlying feeling that there were things we ought to say to one another. Things I ought to tell him, that he ought to want to know. But he didn't ask and I didn't offer, and we went on knowing each other intimately but not, I now realise, completely. I wanted him to only ever see me as the strong, independent woman he knew me for. I never wanted to fall below that standard, one I had of course set for myself during my late teens that really had little to do with Grissom and a lot to do with my inability to concede weakness.

Now, looking back, I see that we had to move in waves. Getting used to being with another person was a big deal for us both. It took months to adjust, albeit hazy, delirious months in which we absorbed all we could of one another, physically, mentally, emotionally. But then we stumbled out of the honeymoon period and were left blinking in the sun, faced with the certainty that we were in an adult relationship, like it or not. Suddenly I had the world to lose. I had without warning learned to rely on another person, and I felt vulnerable.

We were never like other couples. We didn't socialise together, due to the utter secrecy of us. I loved and loathed that burden, covering tracks and telling oblique untruths to protect the best thing that had ever happened to me. Now I wonder what I thought I was protecting it from, except the less accommodating paragraphs of the lab policy. I couldn't be close to the people I now count as family, because I couldn't be honest with them. But I know now I needed them, or someone, and being in the closet very occasionally made me feel like a dirty little secret, something I found hard to bear when an unwitting colleague said something they'd never have said if they knew. And nothing could have prepared me for the stake to the heart that was Heather.

I tried. I really like to think that I tried, to be reasonable, and understanding, and mature. Everyone has friends, often friends with history, and I know that if I decided I needed to have one of those, Grissom would be good about it. But I also know he wouldn't _feel_ good about it. And suffice to say, I did not feel good about Heather.

She is just everything I am not, and it shocked me, scared me, to think that she might be what he wanted, had been holding out for all those years. Something bolder, brassier, sexier. It didn't help to hear Catherine's very honest appraisal, or to miss his calls that would have gone some way to explaining why he was there with her and not home in bed. But as usual I was working, and missed the calls, and when I finally realised he had been trying to contact me it was well into what should have been his sleeping time, because, as usual, I was working a double, and I didn't want to wake him.

So it didn't go down well when he stalked back into the lab in the same clothes, accompanied by a slightly dazed looking Brass. He wasn't able to put it into words, and I couldn't decide what angered me more, that he had spent the night at her place, or that his defence was that they had been talking, which was precisely what he was failing miserably to do to me.

I told him to do what he needed to do, because I didn't want to think about her anymore. I didn't want to hear him tell me she was strong, or tough as nails. I didn't want to know, so I shut down, retreated to my place, and when we were finally in the same bed again, I let him encircle me, and I slept in his arms, but I couldn't say anything.

When the tazer hit me, I knew I had about twenty seconds to get my thoughts in order before I would lose them altogether. There were three. _Make evidence. Not my time. _And, as I slipped to the ground, _Of course you are forgiven._

Not a lot of people get to cheat death. For so many they are out like a light, unable to try to save themselves. I had the chance to fight, to survive. And did I fight. I found strength, physical, mental, from within and without. My mind excelled itself as I thought, thought, thought, furiously searching for a way to outdo my own destiny. It wasn't my day, and I knew it. There was too much left. And when, weeks later, Grissom stood beside me, scraping that gentle poison from my palm, asking that perfectly unexpected and mind blowing question, I knew that was what I had walked those sandy miles for. And, you know, if that was the trade off, it was _worth it._

Of course we haven't talked much about that question since I've been back. I don't want to push it. I don't regret my answer but I don't know if Grissom might be regretting his question. We're settling gently back into our life, and I like it. I like it a lot. I'm not thinking of myself as engaged, and I'm not thinking of myself as.. not.

I stop in the break room to pour myself a coffee, tapping the sides of the pot to send the stray grounds to the bottom, still feeling the warmth of the moment we have just shared, full of promise despite its brevity.

I used the b word. I don't do that very often, but I know it has an effect. I wanted to take it back the instant I said it, the first time, but the way his eyes widened and his grip tightened made me relax. I knew he wasn't one for pet names, really, but this was a special circumstance. He had been to tell Brass that it was his bullet that had killed a fellow officer during a shoot out. It had taken us days to figure it out, and when the awful truth had dawned, we had both felt a deep sadness descend. One of the best, unwittingly guilty of the worst. When he called me that night, he said he wanted to be alone, but it didn't ring true, and for the first time ever I showed up uninvited.

He held the door open after I knocked, looking at me for a long moment. I looked back, trying to show the strength I had been able to summon, the strength I knew he needed that had to come from me. He was strong for me, I told him, and I would be strong for him. He said nothing, but dipped his head to my shoulder, letting me wrap my arms around him.

His shoulders sagged a little, and I kissed his hair. He sighed deeply, and I murmured into his ear,

"_You don't need me to tell you you did the right thing."_ He nodded, agreeing.

"_He'll be okay." _Another nod.

"_It's okay, baby." _ He pulled back, looked at me. For a second I feared he would recoil, hating the fact that I was, at some remove, just like other girls. But he twitched a small smile, and buried his head back into me, kissing my shoulder, hugging me tighter.

Since then, I don't check myself. Sometimes it just comes out.

Besides, for the first six months of our relationship, _everything_ he said floored me. I spent those first months wandering around like a fish who has finally learned to breathe on land, warm and dry for the first time in my life but still not sure why this was happening to me or exactly how long I would survive.

But I know I'm living now.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: As ever, they aren't mine. They're yours, CBS, and I'll thank you for setting them on a similar course as this story, if you would be so kind. Lyrics are Kelly Clarkson's.**

_Grissom_

_And I don't know  
I could crash and burn but maybe  
At the end of this road I might catch a glimpse of me_

I didn't plan on asking Sara to marry me. Actually, I did, but not that day. I had thought about it, and had been allowing the thought to grow and sophisticate in my mind as the days after Natalie got easier. As her arm healed and her sunburn faded, it became a topic of conversation in my head. It hadn't taken seeing her left for dead to make me realize I wanted to spend my life with her. I already was spending my life with her, wasn't I?

It had first occurred to me the night I sat awake with Heather, trying to figure out what was going on in her mind. Heather had figured out what was going on in mine. She had met Sara at the hospital, and wondered aloud to me why she was the only member of my team she had never come across before. I thought about feigning innocence, and then remembered who I was talking to. She knew Sara was different, and asked me if it was love. Knowing me like she does, Heather asks me questions to which I can simply answer yes or no. Was it love? _Yes_. Had I loved her for a long time? _Yes_. Since before we met? I hesitated, but she could see it. _Probably. Yes_.

Heather looked at me for a long minute and then, smiling, said.

"_S__he knows you." _ I asked why she would say that.

"_You've subconsciously kept the two of us apart, and you were worried when we met, because you fear she won't understand our friendship. She doesn't, because you don't yourself. "_

"_Not entirely,"_ I admitted.

"_In the past your reasons for being here have been complicated. But tonight they are innocent, and you're hoping she will know that, even though you haven't told her where you are."_

I had squirmed a little, wondering again just how Heather managed to do this. I nodded, simply.

"_We have trust."_

"_And she has clarity of judgement. She was able to be respectful of my feelings even though she felt unsure of my motives."_

I felt a pang of pride and pleasure at this. Of course she had. This was Sara, and Sara was nothing if not caring. Her empathy preceded her. I nodded again.

"_And she's beautiful." _ I looked at Heather for a long moment, and could do nothing but nod once more.

The next morning, when Brass escorted me back to the lab, and I spotted Sara in the layout room, processing evidence that I recognised from Heather's scene, I knew. I could see in her expression that she was uncomfortable, insecure, but there she was, objective, doing it anyway. The very thing that had made me hire her, kiss her, fall for her. She always did the right thing. She hadn't exploded in Catherine's face as she had talked of Heather's beauty and wealth and her suspicions about our relationship. She hadn't submitted to talk of fantasies and the only woman who had ever rattled me. How wrong Catherine had been, and how little she knew, that the woman holding that title was the very one she was talking to. The one I knew I would stay with. Just… the one. This was in my mind as I stepped into the layout room, to Sara, to the frosty reception I half expected but didn't entirely understand.

When I got home that night, Sara wasn't there. I knew where she was, but I left her alone for a day or so before I went over there. I knew she needed space, and I hoped it wouldn't look like I didn't know something was wrong. We fought, if you can call it that, quite sedately. We didn't shout, or cuss, or throw things, although there was some heat and some coolness in the words we exchanged. She came home, eventually, and we lay close, still and silent in our big bed, the dog snoring at its foot. I could have asked her then, but I knew she wasn't ready to hear it.

I fill my coffee cup from the machine in the lobby of the court house, hoping that this recess will not prolong matters too long. It is straightforward so far, but things can change. I rest against a wall, waiting for Warrick and the rest of our prelim team to return from the bathroom. I look around this all too familiar building.

Today, I have seen two defence attorneys the LVPD keeps on retainer who I have known for years but haven't seen for a long time. Each has greeted me warmly, asked me how things are. Both times I wanted to say that I am getting married. Both times I have not. We haven't really clarified this situation yet, although technically, I haven't retracted my question and Sara hasn't retracted her answer, either.

The air conditioning in this building is a little too much. My suit, a deep, dark blue that Sara has stripped from me once or twice, is not quite thick enough to stop the short shivers that are are inching down my back from time to time. I want this to be over with. I would rather be in the lab. I am prone to thinking about a day, not long from now, when I will walk in here and see Natalie on that stand. I don't want Sara to see her again, but I know that she will want to. She will take the stand, and I won't even suggest that she shouldn't, because it is exactly what I would want and need to do, and exactly why I love her. Let anyone try and tell me Sara isn't brave.

I guess neither Sara nor I had ever considered ourselves the marrying kind. Since that wedding we processed which I had secretly thought was quite interesting, being outdoors, with an arbour, nothing like the typical Vegas tack we usually saw, I had begun, almost without knowing it, to change my mind.

At least, I assumed Sara had thought of herself that way. Her account of that scene was as caustic as mine, but the way she jumped to her own defence when Nick called her anti-wedding.. either way, it was too soon, then, to know what I know now. We were just barely past the stage of discovery and wonderment to think any further ahead. As we were assembled around the break room table, discussing that case, I was thinking about Sara, and I was hoping Sara was thinking about me. That's how new things were. Sara laughed when I told her that, and said that she was always thinking about me.

So perhaps I didn't really know I was going to do it until I did. She joked, later, that it was the bee suit, and that she would have dressed up sooner if she'd known the effect it would have. But it wasn't the suit. It wasn't even the fact that she'd thought nothing of wearing it just to get five minutes alone with me, although that fact didn't escape me.

It was the bee, in the end. The way she so readily removed her glove, so easily swayed by my assurance. The way it crawled slowly across her palm, and she let it. I had to wonder if there was anything she wouldn't do for, or with, me. And how, even in that mesh mask, she managed to make _anything_ romantic. In that second I knew what I had subconsciously known for nine years. That there was no other person living with whom I would rather do these things.

So I said it. And if I had thought she would laugh, or gasp, or say something witty, I was so wrong. Her eyes, which I felt on me as I scraped the sting gently from her palm, were genuinely amazed. I thought for the hundredth time since we met how little this woman knew about her own strength and beauty. I wanted to say, _of course, of course I want to marry you, of course someone would. I can't believe no-one has already_.

Warrick approaches me, signaling that it is time to go back into court. I allow myself one more thought of Sara, driving as she may be by now, home, or to the dog sitter, who only this morning referred to Sara as my wife. I didn't correct her, and as I tighten my tie and head back to my seat, I make a mental note to talk to Sara tonight, so that I will never have to.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: As ever, they aren't mine. They're yours, CBS, and I'll thank you for setting them on a similar course as this story, if you would be so kind. Lyrics are Kelly Clarkson's.**

_Sara_

_And I don't know  
This could break my heart or save me  
Nothing's real  
Until you let go completely_

Ronnie is now walking the halls of the lab with Grissom's book beneath her arm, in mirror image of me earlier today. She is brimming with new knowledge, eager to bestow it on the unsuspecting, and I have mischievously suggested she bore.. I mean grace…Hodges with her spiel.

Grissom is in court, and I have only an empty house to return to, so I agreed to some overtime with Ronnie. I am just re-packing the crime scene photographs into their protective wallets while Ronnie fetches some coffee and talks someone other than me to an early grave. We have another hour's worth of work, I estimate, before I will take the drive to our house, via the dog sitter's. I like going to the sitter's. The way Hank bounds up to me is oddly satisfying, as is the way the sitter still sometimes calls me Mrs Grissom. It is only because he made the initial booking, and she just assumes I am his wife. I've corrected her a few times, but she has a lot of clients, and she forgets, and when she does, I quite like it.

Ronnie returns with our coffee. I have taken pains to show her exactly how I like it, because after eight years on nights, I just can't drink bad coffee. She had diligently studied for this particular exam, and now gets it dead right.

"Find Hodges?" I ask, sipping the lovely liquid. What beats really good coffee, I wonder? Oh, right.. Yes. But not until later.

"Yeah," Ronnie gushes, in her particular way which once irritated and now almost galvanises me. "He tried to tell me I had my facts wrong, about the unique composition of whale bone, but I set him straight. He was all, _cite your source, Lake, _and I was all, _Grissom. Via Sidle."_

I have to smile. She is so animated, and she both assumes and accepts my seniority like she would water on a hot day.

"Yeah, sounds like Hodges." I say, as she sips her coffee.

"He's an ass."

"Tell me something I don't know."

"Did you know our victim had elevated levels of carbon dioxide in her system?" I raise my eyebrows. I did not.

When I touched down at McCarran, I went straight to my apartment. I walked right into the middle of the living room, looked around me at the place I had not really lived in for months, if ever, and realised enough was enough. I packed what was left, what I wanted to keep, which wasn't much, and loaded it into my car which I had left in the lot before I went away. With every trip down the stairs, my arms tired before the second run, I felt worse and better. Worse that I had kept this cold, empty place at all. Better that I was doing now what I knew I ought to have done a long time ago. Better late than never.

I know why I kept the apartment. Moving in to Grissom's house was never a big occasion, it wasn't the kind of milestone other couples might make it. He gave me a key after a few weeks, which in itself was a giant step for mankind. That key burnt a hole in my pocket. I couldn't muster the courage to use it, without direct invitation to do so, and was delighted when he caught me in the locker room one day, shift ending but his departmental meeting just about to begin, and told me to _go on home_. I nodded, wondering what else I would be doing when he was staying there, and then he added, warmly, _put some coffee on, sit out back, take a bath, whatever you want_. Then the smile spread slowly. There was no out back at my place. Whatever indeed.

I didn't really think we were living together until a few months before.. Natalie. I spent a lot of my time there, but I think we both assumed that was because the house was bigger than my apartment. It had a better kitchen, one that actually had pots and pans, and a stoop and porch swing out back that rivalled the two by four terrace my apartment boasted. But I didn't think of it as mine, and still half waited for him to want his space back. So I was surprised, to say the least, when he asked me if I thought we should get a dog.

We were making lunch, or whatever you can call the meal you will eat at sometime during a long night shift. We always made different things, and had two different lunch pails. Such a simple thing, but, as I had pointed out, as we stood in the aisle at the supermarket, our colleagues are paid to notice the details. Cases have been broken on less.

So I was buttering bread, and Grissom was cutting salad, when he slid this into conversation.

"_A dog?"_

"_I've always wanted one."_

"_You. A dog." _

"_Yeah."_

"_Then how come you don't have one?"_

"_I'm never here. But now, with two of us living here, there's a much better chance of someone being home."_

"_There are two of us living here?"_ I put down the knife and turned to look at his back where he stood, working on the counter opposite me. He stopped, but didn't turn.

"_Aren't there?"_ He said, carefully, lightly. I tilted my head to see his profile. He was smiling. I narrowed my eyes, my own smile unavoidable.

"_Well,"_ I began, almost lost for words. "_I guess there are."_

So we got a dog. And I boxed up a lot of my stuff, and Grissom made some room, and I transferred my life from one set of walls to another. I kept the lease, partly because we didn't think it would be a good idea to change my address on the employee database, just in case, and partly because I knew there would be times when I needed somewhere else to be. And there were, from time to time, awful moments where Catherine would call and announce she was coming over for a drink, as she had used to do when they were both bachelors in the emotional sense of the word. She wasn't to know things had changed, and I could hardly expect Grissom to tell her, or even to successfully put her off every time, which would have triggered as many alarm bells in her head as leaving my hairbrush on the coffee table. Which I did, once, although Grissom managed to get to it in time.

So sometimes, I would sweep all obvious clues into my bedside drawer, make sure my closet was firmly shut, tuck my shampoo bottles well behind his and take Hank over to my place for the night. I didn't really mind. If Catherine ever wondered why the dog was always with the sitter when she called round, she never mentioned it.

Likewise, sometimes Greg would insist on pizza and a movie, and when I couldn't convince him to have me over to his place, I would go back to mine before he arrived, skip round nudging things out of place and ruffling bed clothes that it might look like someone had slept there recently. If he ever wondered where half of my stuff was, he never asked.

So it was to this bolthole that I retreated, during the first and only real argument we had, between Heather and Natalie. I was still sore, and wasn't very receptive to Grissom's attempts to explain. He came to my apartment, eventually, after I had spent two nights there, and we fought, briefly.

"_What are you afraid of, Sara? Why do you always run back here?"_

"_I'm afraid of being hurt, you know that."_

"_Have I hurt you?"_

"_I don't know,"_ I levelled at him, slowly, almost not wanting the answer, _"have you?"_

"_Do you trust me?" _Answering a question with a question. So Grissom.

"_You know the answer to that,"_

"_Then you know the answer to your question." _

I did know, and I did trust him. But I wasn't ready to let it go, and I didn't want to fight, not really, not with him. I was frustrated with the world, not just his slight recklessness. I hated the secrecy, the fact that I had let Catherine's words get to me, the fact that I had let myself be intimidated by Heather's beauty.

"_Sara, I'm sorry, that I didn't get the message to you, that you didn't know where I was. I'm sorry that you heard what you heard at the lab. But that's our situation, isn't it? We have to deal with things like that. People can't be respectful of our relationship because they don't know about it."_

"_I know."_

"_But?"_

"_You took a risk, going there."_

"_Yes, I did. Like I take one every day being with you."_

I didn't know what to say to that.

"_Look. I'm not going to belittle your intellect by assuring you that nothing happened. Because you know that it didn't, because you know I wouldn't, and if I had, I wouldn't be here, and you know that too."_

I nodded.

"_I think you should give up this lease." _His eyes were imploring, promising.

"_I'm not ready to give it up." _He sighed, suddenly looking tired.

"_Then will you at least come home with me now?"_

I did, hesitantly, and we slid into our bed, still unsure of the ground we had covered. I didn't think he had _literally_ spent the night with Heather, and I never had thought that. But it stung, a lot, and I couldn't just shake it off. He held me silently until I fell asleep. The downside of being with a man who knew me, and knew me well. I couldn't hide, and he, knowing I wanted to, only drew me closer.

When I got back to Vegas, I could wait no longer to tie off this loose end, and it was no more than a couple of hours before I was dropping the keys into the manager's office, the last box in my arms. In the time I'd been away it had dawned on me quite quickly that I was scared, and that the apartment had been a safety net for the insecurities I couldn't rid myself of. That, even after all, he would leave me, or want me to leave him, and I would be thrown back into the old way of life. I just couldn't accept that he was in, and in for life. After the proposal, and my swift exit, it had all begun to sink in, and from my vantage point all those miles away I had seen what I had never seen before. Grissom had changed. Just as I had always wanted him to, he had fallen for me, and realised, in line with only my wildest dreams, that we were in fact supposed to spend our lives together.

So I did it. I got straight with myself, and admitted that having two places to live was not necessary, and that my excuses about mail and address changes and convenience were pathetic. It was just a way of avoiding admitting that I was still ready to run. And when I stepped off that plane I felt anything but. I just wanted to go home.


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: As ever, they aren't mine. They're yours, CBS, and I'll thank you for setting them on a similar course as this story, if you would be so kind. Lyrics are Kelly Clarkson's.**

_Grissom_

_So here I go with all my thoughts I've been saving  
So here I go with all my fears weighing on me_

Sara is home when I pull onto the drive. Her car sits neatly on our drive, where it was absent for too long. I put my key in the door and hear the skid of clicking claws as Hank comes to greet me.

She comes into the hall behind the dog, forensic journal in hand.

"Our corset victim died of CO2 poisoning. Can you believe that?"

"It's rare," I agree, hanging up my jacket, "but we've seen it before."

"Yeah, I remember. I pulled the case file on that freshman couple at UNLV. Not a lot of similarities."

I kiss her softly, and she stops talking, smiles instead.

"Hi," she says, belatedly.

"Hello." I reply. She leans against me briefly.

"How was court?"

"Good. Warrick did well. I didn't have to do much." I drop my keys on the sideboard and follow her into the kitchen.

"Did you eat?" she asks, as she folds her legs under and sits down on the couch.

"Not yet. Did you?" She shakes her head, easily. There was a time when she would have said yes regardless of the truth.

"You want to go out or stay in?" She asks, her eyes returning to the article she was reading before I came in.

"Stay in," I say, definitively. She nods, then, processing what I have said, she looks up, and reading the look in my eyes, allows a slow smile to twist her lips sideways. This is the look that undoes me, and she knows it.

I didn't know exactly when she was returning from San Francisco. I focused only on the knowledge that she was. Work was everything, then, and I happily pulled doubles as a matter of course. I was in the middle of one when the switch was flicked and my life started up again.

When I pulled up onto my drive that night, I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. The upstairs light was on, as usual. I left it on all the time, then. I told myself it was for the dog.

I let myself in and took off my jacket, shoes, left my keys on the counter. I thought I smelt coffee, faintly, but assumed it was from the last time I had made it. I had no doubt left grounds in the sink. I padded upstairs to take a shower, check the machine in case Sara had called. We had been speaking, once or twice a week, but I was careful to leave the ball very much in her court. I wanted her to do what she needed to do, and wouldn't bombard her with my needs at a time when I knew she was dealing with things that had haunted her all of her life.

The spare room door was ajar, and the light was on. I tried to remember the last time I had been in there, and tutted internally as I realised I had left it on. I pushed the door open and reached for the switch, and stopped.

Sara was on the floor, kneeling between two large boxes, the contents of which were spilling slowly onto the carpet. The image of her is now permanently etched. Her hair was pulled back, a little longer than I remembered it. Several strands fell around her face as she turned to look at me. Jeans that I remembered undoing. A blue button down shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, buttons loose at her throat.

She stood, pushed her hair out of her face, and stepped out of the midst of the packing, or unpacking, I couldn't tell which. She stood perfectly still for a moment, looking at me, eyes bright, brilliant. Then she took three very careful steps towards me, slid her hands up my chest and along my shoulders. I could hardly breathe as I bent to kiss her, tentatively at first, unsure if she would break or disappear. But she kissed back, and in a moment we were breathless, as surprised and rewarded as the first time, years ago now. I remembered it like it were yesterday, as though there was no history in the world but our own.

I pulled back reluctantly, to clutch her close to me, taking in the reality of her body, her weight in my arms, her scent and her skin, all of them mine and all of them back, at last, at long, long last.

"_Are you back for good?"_

"_Looks like it.__."_ I laughed, wrapping my arms tighter around her waist, lifting her off her feet an inch.

"_Are you okay?"_ I asked. Her barely contained grin was as big as mine. Relief coursed through me.

"_Very much so."_

"_Packing or unpacking?"_

"_Unpacking. I gave up my lease. So I guess two of us live here. If that's okay."_ Her tone was playful, breathless, honest, beautiful, all the things I had missed and had needed, all the things that she was that I loved.

Hank nudged between us as I nodded my agreement, forcing his head against Sara's leg, insistent.

"_Oh, right_," she laughed, fussing his ear, _" three of us."_

My eyes met hers, and I could tell, in that moment, that she was home.


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: As ever, they aren't mine. They're yours, CBS, and I'll thank you for setting them on a similar course as this story, if you would be so kind. Lyrics are Kelly Clarkson's.**

_Sara_

_But I know _

_It's never really over_

I've been home only an hour or so when I hear the key in the door, and I instinctively reach out a hand to catch the dog's collar to stop him screeching into the hallway as is his custom, but I am too late, and he skids out of the room. I get up to follow him and wonder if I will ever, ever tire of seeing Grissom walk through a front door that is both of ours.

I am more excited about my case now, partly because it just got interesting, and partly because it reminds me of one we worked together in what I now call the old days. The days before we could talk about work naked. Which we do sometimes, and I'm not ashamed to admit that Grissom talking complex science gets me hot quicker than almost anything else. Although I'm not doing too bad right now. He has given me that look. He wants to stay in, and I am silently applauding his choice which is, of course, exactly what I was hoping he would say. The days when dinner can lead straight to dessert are by far the best.

Lately, and more than ever, dessert, of either variety, leads to talking, and more of it than we have ever done before. We are close to knowing everything, and somehow, since Natalie and then me going away, some other barriers I could never locate have slipped away, and we are comfortable and content in a way I didn't know existed. What we had before was incredible. What we have now is more.

When I was at my Mom's house, I picked up the phone every day for a week before I found the courage to call him. I had to wait, until I could hold back the urge to cry, to ask him to come out there and do this with me, because I knew I had to do it alone but I wanted him, and I wanted him badly.

On the seventh day, I took the phone into the front room, where the big bay window overlooked the steep street. I sat, leaning against the cold glass, and thought about what I would say. My mom was at the market, pretending that buying groceries and cooking us a huge meal would gloss over the fact that we knew nothing about each other and were struggling to get anywhere close. It was hard. She was, is, nothing like me, and I don't find it easy to talk to people at the best of times. I mean really talk.

But I knew I had to rein myself in, not loosen up, before I made that call. I knew that if I broke down he would probably get on the first plane out, and as much as I dearly, achingly wanted to collapse into his strong arms, I knew that wouldn't get done what I needed to get done.

So I sat there, until I could feel some walls going up. I thought about all the years we had spent in denial, the years we had thrilled and killed one another's hopes in equal measure. Two steps forward, three back. Catherine may think Heather's the only one Grissom has played at mental chess. Catherine has no idea.

I remembered the day we met, and the day I arrived in Vegas. I remembered the day I was supposed to leave Vegas, when he showed up to drive me to the airport, only to offer me a job. From then the pace just picked up and picked up, and we ran from case to case, in a stream of science and sassy words, impressing and intriguing one another. Our language was science, law, technical terminology that was no less sexual for being at one remove. We were an amazing team, and I suppose I thought it was only a matter of time before our bodies would get the better of our minds.

I had been in Vegas for a little over two years when I began to think I had underestimated his mind. And things began to grow tense, both of us reaching for distraction and comfort elsewhere, he I think desperate to rationalise his decision that co-workers couldn't. And me desperate to rationalise the fact that he would apply a rationalisation to _that_.

I don't know now if Hank was a reaction to Terri or if Heather was a reaction to Hank. The why and wherefore got lost in the pain of the what. What we both did and each knew about, minor dalliances that did little to assuage (for me, at least) the ongoing torch held. When we were finished fighting, for want of a better word, our feelings, I wanted him all the more.

And then things grew slowly dark. Grissom stopped talking to me, I mean really talking, and our dialogue became tense where once it had been sparkling, and what had once set me alight just burned. Alone, or so I felt, I slipped, a little. Got some counselling, which I'd resisted all my life. Took some time off, which had never felt right. And when he stood over me that day, demanding to know what was wrong, I thought to myself, _you know what, there just isn't anything else I can do for you. I'm way outside of my comfort zone already, so what the hell._ So, out of anger or pain or desire, I'm still not sure, I opened up, and I let him know me.

The change was not instant, but it was marked. The tension ebbed away quickly, and within a few weeks I noticed I was rarely on a case with anyone but Grissom. He kept me close, and I let him. Now and again I felt his hand on my back, guiding me, as he used to do in the early days. I let him. He was subtly protective of me, and I liked it. When I was in danger, once, I saw fear in his eyes. Just a flash. He saw it too, in mine. The look we shared when I struggled free was one of conspiracy. _We won't tell._

A slow shift changed us forever. Dayshift having a twenty four hour rush on a high profile case shunted everything we were working on onto the back burner, and we were unable to join their investigation at that late stage, so were forced to vacate the layout room and accept that we wouldn't get much done. A team breakfast ensued, five pagers on the table, waiting for word that we had our lab back. Word never came, and when shift was officially over, Nick, Warrick and Catherine went their various ways, glad to be getting off on time for once. Something made me stay, and before I could work out what it was, Grissom was ordering us more coffee.

He kissed me that day, as we sat in his car. He drove me home, and kissed me again. Then he left me to work out what it all meant and for twelve hours I fretted and feared. Until I walked into the lab that night and saw his face. There was no disguising what was there. He looked as sure as I felt. The end of that shift was the first time I had ever seen Grissom leave work on time.

The first time he called me his girlfriend, I cried. Not in front of him, of course. Later, when I went home. He said it so casually, like it had always been so. His neighbour happened to knock on the door one day, maybe three, four months in to our relationship. There stood this little old lady, bearing a parcel that she'd signed for while he was at work. I didn't have time to adore the fact that he knew his neighbours by name, because there he was, introducing us, telling her this was his girlfriend, and her name was Sara. _That's me_, I thought, but I couldn't be any more coherent than that. When he closed the door I chose another means of expression that conveyed my meaning pretty well, I think.

These days he calls me his partner. I like that. But I'm going for _wife_.


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: As ever, they aren't mine. They're yours, CBS, and I'll thank you for setting them on a similar course as this story, if you would be so kind. Lyrics are Kelly Clarkson's.**

_Grissom_

_Three months and it's still harder now  
Three months I've been living here without you now_

When Sara called me from San Francisco, I feared the worst. And in the last three months I have learned the many meanings of that phrase.

I asked if she was alright, and she said yes. I asked if she was with her mother, and she said yes.

I told her I loved her, and I felt her relax. I told her she would always have a home with me.

_Thank god_, she said.


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer: As ever, they aren't mine. They're yours, CBS, and I'll thank you for setting them on a similar course as this story, if you would be so kind. Lyrics are Kelly Clarkson's.**

_Sara_

_Three months and I'm still standing here  
Three months and I'm getting better yeah  
_

When I finally made the call, I could hardly speak. I just told him I was okay, and that I loved him, and that I would come home, sometime. I waited for him to yell, to be indignant, anything that I thought I deserved. But he sighed, long and slow, and I felt some of the tension leave his voice.

_Thank god._ Was all he said.


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer: As ever, they aren't mine. They're yours, CBS, and I'll thank you for setting them on a similar course as this story, if you would be so kind. Lyrics are Kelly Clarkson's.**

_Grissom_

_So I won't worry about my timing, I want to get it right  
No comparing, second guessing, no not this time_

Sara is standing on our back porch, her figure silhouetted in the light from the house behind her. I'm sitting at our little table, enjoying the night air, the warmth we fight to escape in the day time but want to prolong at night. It feels good. Sara sips the tea she has been in to make and looks out at our small back yard and beyond, one shoulder leaning against the back door.

"Hey," I say, softly.

"Hey baby," she says, with a small smile. And I know that it is time. I beckon, inclining my head towards the seat beside me. She sits down. It is almost dark, that beautiful twilight between day and night that we were for so long. Her slender fingers wind around the steaming mug in front of her. She looks at that, not at me.

"Stop me, if you don't want to talk about this, but .." I pause for breath, and she nods, as though she knows what is coming. "..before you went away, we were.. talking about.. well you know what we were talking about."

"No, what were we talking about?" Her smile is sly, and quick, but I don't miss it. She's going to make me say it.

"We were talking about getting married." I say it quickly. I am still not _good_ at this.

"Huh," she says, carefully. "I do _not_ remember that." I freeze, taken aback. _What?_ She turns to look at me, her brown eyes catching the light from the open door. She's playing. "So how did that conversation go? Remind me." Far be it for me not to indulge a lady.

"I think I said…" I pause, my heart racing in my chest, the moment so loaded I can barely believe this is my life, my voice saying these words. "Will you marry me?"

Sara looks at me for a very long moment. "And what did I say?" I swallow, my mouth dry.

"You said …yes."

"_Huh_," she says, quietly. She takes a sip of her tea. "Actually, I think your exact words were, maybe we should get married."

"So you do remember," I retort, playing her game. She slides a little closer to me, slips both arms around my neck.

"Of course I do." She leans her forehead against mine as I ask, " And?" She closes her eyes and I feel her breath against my face.

"One more time," she whispers, as though preparing herself. Which is as much as I can do, my heart in my mouth now as I form the words, one last time, hoping, wanting, needing, so close to the rest of my life, to together, to us, to everything. I take her face in my hands.

"Will you marry me?" There are tears on my face and I can't tell whose they are.

"Yes."


	10. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer: As ever, they aren't mine. They're yours, CBS, and I'll thank you for setting them on a similar course as this story, if you would be so kind. Lyrics are Kelly Clarkson's.**

_Sara_

_Three months and I wake up_

Our bedroom is as dark as the yard, the only light from the hall, spilling just across the threshold that we have stepped across together, Grissom guiding me backwards until my knees made contact with the bed and he could lay me down, the sweetest, strongest action. I am constantly turned on by the knowledge that he could lift me clean off my feet if he wanted to. I don't need to be literally swept, but sometimes, the power and the passion of his gaze as he compels me into one of our moments leaves me with no doubt that if any man could, this is the one. The only one.

I had never been breathless until I kissed this man, and I am breathless now. He makes me shake. His hands are under my head, holding, cradling me, kissing me deeply as he settles somewhere above me. There is the soft rustle of cloth on cloth as we move, slowly for now, intensity building gradually as we each try to process what has just happened.

The words he has said have turned me to jelly. He let out the biggest sigh of relief at my answer, as if, in his mind, there was doubt. As if I didn't make that decision years ago. Other words are collecting in my throat, all the things that I want to tell him, everything he awakens in me. He bows his head to trace a slow path down my neck, his lips so warm and tender, and I arch slightly in response. When he reaches my chest he lifts his eyes to meet mine, and I have to speak. Here in the dark there is nothing left to keep back.

"I have loved you since the day I met you," I tell him, my voice low in our quiet chamber, placing a small kiss on his lips before I continue, "and I will love you until the day I die."

There is a glistening reflection in his eyes, caught by the light from the open door. It could be tears, I don't know, and I don't mind not knowing. His emotions are so clear to me now. He kisses me by way of response, and slides my shirt off my shoulders. I shrug out of it and push his down his back, too, until they fall to the floor in a soft heap. His skin is hot as it presses down on mine, and I pull him as close as close can be.

"Sometimes I still can't believe you're mine," he says, his mouth at the edges of my bra, nudging, promising. Another moment and it joins my shirt on the floor.

"Likewise," I breathe, as the pile of clothes grows and we are, at last, naked, together. We lie there, enjoying the sensation, for a moment or two, and then Grissom reaches over my head onto the bedside table. He takes my hand.

"Does this help?" He asks, and there is a ring on my finger. My heart stops. My other hand covers my mouth, keeping in what would be something between a sob and a laugh. I stare, in the half light, at the symbol of everything that I have. The reason I made it out of the desert, the reason I even came to this city in the first place.

I wrap my arms around his shoulders, clutching him to me, as tightly as I can. He buries his face in my hair, holding me, and I am smiling, smiling into the dark room.

"Yeah," I whisper, smile turning to a gasp as he closes the one remaining gap between us, sending heat coursing through me.

"Yes," I say again, as we move together. Its all I've ever wanted to say to him.


End file.
